Making a Google Food Map

Plus: Dinner at Bao Bei, Omakase at Hil Sushi, and a Welcome Home Pasta with Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Olives

Hey everyone,

Two things occurred to me last night while looking over my Vancouver food pictures (are there any other kind of pictures from a vacation?): (1) I did a really good job eating my way around the city; and (2) that’s mostly due to my Google food map.

What’s a Google food map? If you know the answer to this question, skip ahead to more award-winning* content. (* = not corroborated)

Here’s the deal, food friends: if you’re traveling to a new city, or you want to remember more places to eat in your own city, you can make a Google map. Here’s one I started making last night for NYC:

[Click here to bookmark it yourself.]

To make your own, start by following this link to the My Maps page on Google. Click “Create a New Map.” Then name it. For example: “My Dream Trip to Paris” or “Mexico City or Bust.” Then create layers — these are categories that you can use to organize your map. For my NY map I made the layers “Fancy Schmancy,” “Casual But Sit-Down Food,” “Fast Cheap Eats,” “Bars,” “Wine Bars,” “Coffee Shops,” and “Bakeries.”

To make things easier, I color-coded each category. This is the only confusing part. When you enter a spot into a category (more on that in a second), you can click the little paint-fill icon and choose a color. The tricky thing is you then have to go to that category on the left, click “individual styles,” and change that to “uniform style.” That means everything in that category will have the same color (which is what you want). If that sounds confusing, just don’t worry about it.

Finally, you start entering your places. I do this by Googling “Eater (insert city name here”). For example if you Google “Eater Vancouver” you’ll get Eater’s 38 Essential Vancouver Restaurants, which is a great place to start. Enter the ones that you’re interested in and to make it extra useful put the places in your color-coded categories.

Then continue by Googling “best restaurants (insert city here).” You’ll have to use your spidey sense to figure out which sources are reputable (Vancouver Magazine, for example) vs. which sources are questionable (Bob’s Vancouver Picks 1988). I like looking through Reddit threads because sometimes you’ll find some gems. Other good sources: 36 Hours in (insert city name here) from The NYT, Bon Appetit city guides, The Infatuation, even TikTok.

To use your map, bookmark it on your web browser or text it to your phone and make sure you have the Google Maps app. And that’s it! Wherever you are in the city, you can open up the map, it’ll show you where you are, and all of the places you bookmarked near you. So if you’re craving coffee or a wine bar, now you’ll know where to go.

Any more tips for a Google food map? Share them in them in the comments!

Okay now back to our previously-scheduled programming.

I’m back in NYC now but my last two days in Vancouver involved some major eating. First, there was this solo dinner I had at the bar at Bao Bei:

Bao Bei may have been the most recommended spot on my Vancouver map, so I hit it up quickly before visiting Craig on set.

Those are smashed cucumbers and tofu skins with Bao Bei’s signature margarita (with tangerine and ginger). Everything was so, so flavorful and the wontons were especially good, served in a zingy broth with assorted lettuces:

The bartender was extremely helpful, guiding me through the menu. And the dessert — chrysanthemum panna cotta with tangerine sauce — looked like a painting.

Of all the meals that I ate in Vancouver (and I ate a lot!), this was definitely the most memorable and the one I’d hit back up first on my next trip back.

On Saturday night, I had a red-eye scheduled for 10:30 PM (this was the only direct flight out of Vancouver back to NY and after a chaotic day of travel on my way there, with delays and a run through the Minnesota / St. Paul airport, I didn’t want to connect again) but then the flight was rescheduled for 3:30 AM. That’s right. 3:30 AM.

The good news is that I had more time for a sit-down dinner with Craig, who wanted sushi. So we picked Sushi Hil, a charming spot on Main Street.

Because we had so much time to kill, and it was farewell for another two weeks, we decided to splurge on the omakase menu. This was a great choice because the dishes that came out were stunning and not things we would’ve at all thought to order ourselves off the menu.

The oysters that you see above had yuzu granita and uni plus some kind of roe. They were magnificent. As was almost everything else that we ate.

If you love sushi and you’re headed to Vancouver, put Sushi Hil on your Google Map!

So I slept a little on the plane, but not a lot, and before I knew it I was back home with Winston (he was so happy to see me) by 11 AM on Sunday (yesterday) morning. I mostly took it easy, and for dinner I was going to order a pizza, but NY pizza delivery is a stressful proposition: so many options and also so $$$$. So I decided to do what I always do… I whipped up a pantry pasta. Here’s a video I just made of what I did:

amateurgourmet

A post shared by @amateurgourmet

It was yummy. Put it on your Google map.

Okay, let’s look at some links!

• The CoolStuff Guide to TriBeCa (Coolstuff.nyc);

• Loved this Mark Harris article on gay body culture (T:Style Magazine);

• When I was researching Vancouver restaurants, I read all about Vij’s (I went to their more casual place once) and somehow found this culinary tour that Vikram Vij is leading to India… sounds amazing! But very $$$$ (Worldwide Quest).

That’s all for today, folks….

See you back here on Thursday!

Your pal,

Adam